


The Wandering Light

by Oreramar



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Discovery, Gen, Light Reading, Pilgrimage, Seraph Sorey, but easygoing, final steps of purification, friendships, long fic, outsider pov, slow-burning semblance of a plot, written for a friend
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 03:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9697592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oreramar/pseuds/Oreramar
Summary: Sorey was promised to return, once the purification of the land was complete. It was never said that he would still be human when he did come back, nor that he would return completely without reason. He finds a new age - an age of peace and prosperity, of cooperation between seraph and human-kind. All that remains is to safeguard it - and for that, Sorey needs a Shepherd.-This story has its moments of plot, but by and large it is a tale of reunion and reconnection and friendship, set against the backdrop of exploring this changed, yet familiar, world. It is to be updated daily with bite-sized, vignette-like chapters until I run out of pre-written material.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zilleniose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zilleniose/gifts).



The road to Marlind was long, but smooth and easy, winding under clear blue skies and edged by verdant trees. Mirei was glad for this start to her pilgrimage; storms and pitted paths would have felt too much like bad omens to her anxious mind. The peace and quiet was at least soothing. Besides, though this seemed a little silly to admit, she didn’t want to get mud on her cloak already. It was only two days old, and the white was still so pristine.

She walked not quite alone but entirely unbothered all the way to the Shepherd’s Bridge. The moment she set foot on the first of the stones, a voice broke through the quiet air.

“Hello! Shepherd! Sorry, but could I have a moment?”

Mirei turned around, half ready to apologize for no real reason - she was only a new Shepherd, for all that she had taken the oath and the burden willingly, and was yet unsure if she could rise to all the expectations of the people - but bit it back upon seeing the two men who approached up the path. One was calm, but smiling, dressed in blue and white and carrying a staff; the other grinned and waved, nearly dancing as he walked, feathers at his ears and a white cloak not unlike Mirei’s own in shape draped over his shoulders, though his was edged and marked in swirls of gold. Her eyes caught on the pale colors of their hair, and her resonance sang.

These were not humans.

A lifetime of habit ducked her head in a bow; two days of gentle reminders brought it back up a mere moment later. She probably looked ridiculous bobbing like that, but there was no taking back the reflexive motions now. She opened her mouth to ask how she could assist them. Her gaze found brilliant green eyes and a sharp, high squeal rose without warning inside her mind.

Lailah burst into luminous being beside her, still squealing, and threw herself at the green-eyed seraph.

“ _Sorey!”_

He caught her, staggering, and laughed.

“Well, that answers that, at least! Good to see you again Lailah.”

“You’ve changed! But you remember? _I’m so happy to see you!_ ”

She was crying into the front of the seraph’s cloak. He looked down at her with fond familiarity, and Mirei shifted on her feet, not sure what her place was here.

“Of course I remember. There’s no way I could forget you guys! Besides, I might’ve happened…a little differently than most, I guess.”

“What he’s trying to suggest is that there’s a possibility he never exactly died, only that he changed from one state to the next during purification,” the other seraph said, leaning on a staff as he watched. “We talked about it while we were looking for you.”

“Looking for me?” Lailah asked, drawing back and wiping her tears. “Whatever for?”

“I’d like to know that myself,” said the seraph with the staff. “He’s been annoyingly cryptic ever since he found me exploring ruins and said we had to find you and, if possible, a new shepherd. I’m beginning to suspect he’s under some kind of oath at this point.”

The green-eyed seraph smiled, perhaps a little sheepishly.

“Sorry,” he said. “I know this seems strange, but…well. This is your Shepherd?”

“Oh - yes! This is Mirei.” Lailah waved her forward. She approached and, gripped again by habit, bowed once more in greeting. “Mirei, these are Sorey and Mikleo. They’re old friends of mine.”

“Mirei,” said Sorey, nodding to her. Then he laughed. “Our names almost sound alike! Mirei, listen, this is going to sound strange, since we just met and everything, but…will you and Lailah take me on as a Sub Lord?”

The peace held for just one long moment.

Then, as it erupted into two different tones of shock, as Mirei watched her prime lord and Mikleo bombard Sorey with questions, she felt her nerves grow. Not a cloud passed over the sun, yet it seemed to her that the world darkened for a moment, as if this smiling seraph, all white and gold and shining green eyes, was after all an omen worse than any dreaded weather.

The moment passed, but still it left behind the distinct impression that everything was once again about to change.

 

-

 

“You’ll need a divine artifact to armatize,” Lailah said, hours later and after the questions had subsided for the day. Sorey had evaded most of them - often clumsily, but evasions all the same - and eventually the other two gave up and simply accepted the fact that this seraph was apparently hell-bent upon becoming a Sub Lord, apparently for no reason he could say. Mirei herself still had very little idea what was going on.

“I wouldn’t know where to start looking, honestly,” Sorey said, one hand running through his hair. “We never really searched for any before, did we? Aside from Mikleo’s bow, they were just already there, and we kind of found his by accident.”

“We can narrow it down a bit, at least,” Lailah said. “What is your element? I don’t suspect you have one of the usual four.”

“I’m not really sure,” said Sorey. He lifted a hand; arcs of white light leapt between his fingers. “At first I thought it was lightning, but it doesn’t really feel like it. It’s not…I don’t know. It doesn’t…smell right?”

“There’s no sound,” Mirei said without thinking. She found herself pinned by three pairs of questioning eyes. “I mean…doesn’t lightning zap? Or crackle?”

“It does,” Sorey said, blinking. “Remember, Mikleo?”

“You’re right,” said the water seraph. “Gramps’ lightning did sound and smell different. It looks a little different too, now that I’m thinking about it. His snapped. Yours looks more like it flows.”

“Perhaps it’s not lightning, but _light_ ,” Lailah suggested, putting her hands together and tilting her head with a smile.

“Is that even an element?” Mikleo asked, sounding dubious. Sorey put his hand down, the brilliance fading away and leaving shadows dancing in Mirei’s vision where she had looked too closely at it.

“Who is to say?” Lailah asked. “Besides, whether it’s light or not-quite-lightning, I have an idea of where to look now. We’ll need to go back to Ladylake.”

“What? Already?” Mirei said. “What about the pilgrimage?”

“Pilgrimage?” Sorey asked.

“All new Shepherds go on the pilgrimage after they take their oath,” Mirei explained. “It starts at Ladylake, then you go to Marlind, to see the Great Tree, then to the Basin, Lastonbell, the shrinechurch in Pendrago…all the important places. It’s a time to learn about your role and get to know your Prime Lord before you really begin your work as a Shepherd and go wherever you need to. It’s been tradition for ages.”

“You’ll still be learning and getting to know me,” Lailah said. “It’ll just be like if we forgot something important at the inn, and had to go back to get it, that’s all!”

“I’d hate to make you backtrack, though,” argued Sorey. “It should be all right if you just tell me where to look, and then I’ll catch up with you after I pick it up myself.”

Lailah shook her head.

“Ladylake has changed the past few centuries; I’m afraid you’d get lost! Besides…this is something I want to show you, if I may.”

“It’s that important?” Mirei asked. Lailah nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll go back.”

“Really, you shouldn’t have to--”

“Maybe I want to,” Mirei said, before her mind caught up with her voice and told her that she’d just rudely interrupted a seraph. “Sorry. I just meant…I trust Lailah, and we’re not too far out anyhow. Just like forgetting something important, right? Sometimes you have to go back.”

His hand went back into his hair.

“Well…if you’re sure…”

“Absolutely.”

“All right, then. Back to Ladylake it is!”

 

-

 

It wouldn’t matter how often she saw the great city of Ladylake; Mirei knew that she would be gripped by the same awe every time she looked out across the water to the soaring city that seemed to rise from its depths. Sorey seemed equally awed, from the sound he made upon first catching sight of it.

“It was amazing before,” he said, “but now…”

“It is what humans and seraphim can achieve when working together,” said Mikleo, sounding personally pleased. He clapped Sorey on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get a closer look at that dream of yours.”

Lailah materialized and took the lead inside the city. The streets bustled with people about their personal business, but there was often a called greeting or a quick nod to spare for a Shepherd and the seraphim who walked with her. Sorey looked like a man who had just walked out of a cave to be dazzled by the sun; had Mikleo not kept hold of his arm, he might have walked into countless people and stationary objects before they had gotten through the first district, and he nearly tripped over his own two feet when a worker nodded to him with a quick “my lord seraph” as they passed.

“They can see us?” Sorey asked.

“Not all of them,” Mikleo murmured quietly, though not so quietly that Mirei couldn’t hear them even over the surrounding noise of the city, “but there are many more who can than can’t, and those who can’t see us tend to take their cues from the rest regardless.”

Sorey laughed, though it was thin and breathy, and reached up to rub his eyes. Mirei caught the sparkle of water there before she turned her own away.

“This is amazing,” she heard him say.

“Welcome to the new world,” Mikleo replied.

Following Lailah, they walked on.

Mirei wasn’t sure where she expected to be taken. The sanctuary seemed like a destination at once too obvious and too erroneous - a divine artifact seemed like something to be found in a holy place, yet she somehow doubted that they would discover whatever Lailah had in mind in the very same place where Shepherds since time immemorial had taken their oaths. She wasn’t surprised when they took a different road, though try as she might, she couldn’t think of anything significant in the direction it led.

Lailah stopped outside a low set of doors, heavy and utilitarian.

“The aqueducts?” Sorey asked.

“Through them,” Lailah said. “There is a more direct path elsewhere, but this is quieter. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. Just follow me.”

They hauled the doors open and walked into a dim blue light. Sorey raised a hand, brilliance gathering in his palm. The rippling surface of the water threw it back against the walls and ceiling, so that they were surrounded by a shifting latticework of light. Mirei found it incredibly distracting, so that she lost track of the turns and paths before too long. Some time after that, she decided that the distraction had hardly mattered; she couldn’t have kept track of their route even if she had been paying the utmost attention. She was still half convinced they’d backtracked at least once, and gone in a circle a time before that. She never said anything, though, as Lailah seemed to know where she was going, and Sorey and Mikleo both showed no concern as Sorey talked about unfamiliar architecture and Mikleo lectured him in turn about new expansions and style changes ushered in by the start of the Age of Restoration and beyond.

Not for the first time, Mirei felt a little over her head in their company, and it was a relief when Lailah finally stopped in front of another set of doors.

“Here it is - the back door, so to speak. It was intended mostly for maintenance access during construction, but it will get us to where we need to go.”

They stepped through it into a narrow corridor, and from there into a wide, pillared hall, though the air felt close and still. Mirei automatically tried to quiet her breathing, feeling as though she had stepped into a holy place, though there was no seraph to be seen, and the only domain she could sense was that of the Lord of the Land, present throughout the city and the lake beyond. A set of double doors, at least twice as tall as a man, stood at the far end of the hall, and banners hung on the stone walls, though they had grown dusty with time. At the end nearest them, under an old stone carving of the royal crest of Hyland, there was a stone pedestal, waist-high at the top. A shrine stood before it, and on top of it lay a long, gleaming spear, and on this alone there was no sign of the passage of time.

“Alisha.”

Mirei looked at Sorey; his expression was stricken for an instant. Then the pain faded to a sad smile.

“I’d forgotten, somehow, what it meant to be gone so long,” he said, eyes still fixed on the spear. “I knew deep down, but something inside of me still expected to see them again.”

“She lived a long life,” Lailah said, her tone gentle. “It was full, and happy. She achieved so much for the world, and passed on in peace. She has long been remembered and revered by her people as Alisha the Radiant, though the memory of this has faded somewhat in time. Still, something of it lingers. I’ve long suspected that her spear took on some aspect of this reverence, becoming useable as a divine artifact, though it doesn’t seem to match the resonance of any of the four elements. Perhaps this is because it was meant to match yours.”

“Destiny, huh?” Sorey said. Slowly, softly, he walked forward. His hands hovered for a moment over the spear, then fell to touch the stone instead, just for a moment. “Thank you, Alisha. I’m sorry I never said goodbye.”

Gently, he lifted the spear from its resting place. There was no visible sign, no change in seraph or weapon, but he nodded, turned, and extended his hand to Lailah.

“I’m ready.”

“Hold on,” Mikleo interrupted, “I just want something to be clear for Mirei. If you take him on as your Sub Lord, you’re getting me as well. It won’t be right away; we’ll need to give you time to recover first, but it will happen. Only let him go through with this if you’re all right with that. Okay?”

“I…” Mirei could hardly think. A week as a Shepherd, half of that spent unconscious with fever, and two promised Sub Lords already? “I’d be honored.”

“Careful,” Sorey joked, “he’s stubborn as a rock. You might regret it.”

Mirei shook her head.

“Never.”

Lailah took Sorey’s hand, drew herself up, and then broke into a sudden giggle.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just…I’ve never done this with a seraph of such an unusual element before. I’ll have to improvise for the first part. Let’s see…

“ _Oh ye born of purest radiance, here let our pact be forged, that my unquavering incandescence may be as they purification. Shouldst thou accept this burden, recite aloud your name.”_

Sorey’s eyes sought Mikleo’s. They shared a quick, knowing grin, and then he looked directly at Mirei.

“Silmen Estym.”

A spark of light, and Sorey was gone - no, Sorey was _there_ , like a glow filling her heart and mind, such that she could hardly contain it. She had to do something, and so she lifted her arm and, without further thought, repeated his name: “ _Silmen Estym_.”

The glow overflowed, forming smooth metal under her hand and silken cloth around her body. Her bangs drifted across her eyes, the color of ashes rather than coal, and she felt the weight of a long ponytail at the back of her head, where there had only ever been a short braid. She was dressed in perfect white, and a banner of the same unmarred cloth flowed from just beneath the beautifully engraved head of the ornate silver spear she held. For an instant, she was luminous, and then it faded away, vanishing as Sorey reappeared before her with a gentle smile.

“That was…” she gasped, “I’ve never…”

“Your first armatization!” Lailah said, clapping her hands in delight. “It was beautiful. Well done, you two!”

“Sorey the Dreamer,” Mikleo muttered, still smiling. “It figures.”

“Like I didn’t already tell you,” Sorey retorted.

Mirei beamed at them all, caught her breath, and said, “I think I’m going to sit down now.”

And so she did.

“Time to get you back to the inn, I guess,” Sorey said. “Sorry about that - delaying your journey, I mean.”

Mirei started to shake her head, but stopped when the room moved further across her vision than it should have in such a small motion.

“Mm,” she hummed instead. “It’s okay.”

“Come on. I’ll carry you back,” he said, and with Mikleo’s help he lifted her up onto his back, her arms draped over his shoulders and her head tucked beside his neck.

She fell asleep before they left the aqueduct, lulled by the steady stride of the seraph and the sound of their voices around her.


	2. Chapter 2

Sorey carried a small book at the back of his belt, under his cloak. Mirei didn’t get a good look at it until they reached Marlind and the continental library there; Sorey took it out to compare its passages to those of another book from the library’s shelves, and Mirei noticed the angular design on the cover for the first time.

“You have a copy of the Shepherds’ Journal?” she asked. Sorey looked up and blinked in confusion, so she dug hers out of her bag and showed it to him. They were different books in detail; hers was a bit thicker, but smaller across the cover, and the design of the sigil had changed in slight and subtle ways, but they were both lovingly worn through frequent reading, with favorite passages marked with scraps of paper or string.

“The Celestial Record?” Sorey said, reaching for her book and laying his fingers across the cover. “It’s still around?”

“I guess so,” Mirei said, taking a seat across the table from him and placing her book in the center. “I remember reading somewhere that the Journal used to be called that, but it’s been hundreds of years since then, and it’s gone through so many editions and versions…mine’s abridged, for travel, but it includes relevant passages all the way up to Shepherd Yesef. There’s a full unabridged version at our home library; I’ve been reading it since I got big enough to turn the pages. What edition is yours?”

“Um…original, I guess?” Sorey said.

“You’re kidding…” Mirei looked harder at the book in his hands: hand-made leather cover with metal fittings; rough-edged, somewhat uneven pages, slightly yellowed; brown ink, lines just a little too fuzzy at the edges for advanced printing techniques…

She just wanted to _hold_ it, just for a second.

“I kind of want to see yours,” Sorey said. “Trade you for a bit?”

“Yes! I mean, yes, if you want, for a bit.”

They swapped, and Mirei handled his like the treasure it was, knowing that book appraisers, collectors, and libraries the world over would clamor over themselves to be in her shoes, even for just a rumor of an original copy of the Journal, a version so old it was still called the Celestial Record. She opened the cover with care, half expecting it to fall apart in her fingers from the stresses of time, but it was impossibly well-preserved and handled as though it had been printed and bound a mere two decades before.

It was difficult to read; the shapes of some letters had changed, so that she puzzled over several words before realizing that the signs she thought were stylized f’s were actually s’s, and that sometimes the letter y stood in for th. Words seemed to mean different things, and some words she didn’t recognize at all, so that she had to interrupt Sorey to ask him what ‘fain’ meant, among others. He explained gladly, asking in turn how they had managed to make paper so even and bright, letters so crisp, illustrations so finely detailed, so that they hardly noticed when Mikleo returned from some far corner with a huge stack of books to read and Lailah sat down nearby to peruse a slim volume she carefully concealed from their sight.

“I can’t believe it - this really _has_ to be an original edition of the Celestial Record,” Mirei said hours later, her eyes still bright though they ached to sleep. “It was never corrected to mention the two-century Age of Silent Shepherds, let alone the Age of Chaos and the Lost Shepherd at the end of that, not to mention the focus on ruins and shrines, and the woodcuts! Do you have any idea how rare this is? The last known copy in the world was lost in a fire over a hundred years ago!”

Sorey huffed half a laugh across from her, closing her copy of the Shepherds’ Journal around one finger.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “It’s kind of strange to think about, in a way. I’ve had that for years, and it’s never been anything…well, _that_ kind of special. You sure know a lot about books, though.”

“My dad’s a bookbinder, and my mom works in restoration in the library at Woodsmantle,” Mirei explained. “I’ve kind of been surrounded by them my whole life. The Journal’s always been my favorite, though; I love reading about the history of the Shepherds and the seraphim. That copy was a gift from my parents. It’s kind of what inspired me to go to Ladylake for the sword festival, actually. I never expected I’d be chosen, though.”

“Don’t doubt yourself, Mirei,” Lailah said from the nearby armchair. “You heard my call in your soul and you rose to answer it. That means more than just drawing a sword, you know.”

“You’re from Woodsmantle?” Sorey asked, saving Mirei from her pleased flush of embarrassment. “I’ll admit, I’ve never heard of it. Where is that?”

“Between the Basin and Volgran forest,” she said. “We’re not as big as Ladylake, Marlind, or Pendrago, but we’re decently sized, what with having our own library, a nice sanctuary, and a couple of schools.”

“Woodsmantle was founded a few decades after the end of the Age of Chaos,” Mikleo said, never lifting his eyes from the massive tome he was reading. “Legend says that a band of former mercenaries brought their families together and settled on the edge of the forest, pledging to make it safe for travelers in memory of the Lost Shepherd.”

“Other stories say that it was a band of assassins, or at least that the mercenaries had some kind of deal with them,” Mirei added. “There’s a lot of different versions out there, depending on the region. My favorites are usually the ones without the assassins; most of the ones that include them make it kind of dark somehow.”

“Woodsmantle,” Sorey echoed. His eyes and smile had gone soft and sad again, as they had been when he saw the spear of Alisha the Radiant. “Lucas?”

Mikleo hummed, reached over without looking, and patted Sorey on the shoulder.

“It’s good to know,” Sorey assured him, and with that he went back to reading the Shepherds’ Journal. Not quite sure what was meant by this, Mirei did the same, sinking back into the book which was ages away from, yet still the basis of, her favorite in the world.

All the while, though, she was starting to wonder, though she kept her thoughts to herself…for now.

 

-

 

A fight found them between the Basin and Lastonbell in the form of a group of men turned to banditry, and turned by banditry into hellions. Mirei was not the strongest fighter, but her seraphim had been training her along the way, and supported her from behind in the battle, and so they pulled through, quelling and purifying all the malevolence there.

A fight found them, and so did the wind.

“Am I seeing things or what?” said a voice as the last bandit fell, darkness burning away from his form. Mirei turned with her baton at the ready, though she was unprepared for what she saw standing atop a rise, peering down at them from under the brim of a battered black hat: a seraph unlike any seraph she had ever seen before.

For starters, he didn’t seem to believe in shirts.

“Hey, Zaveid!”

“Oh no,” Zaveid said, jumping down to their level and shaking his head at Sorey. “Nooo, I think I need a better greeting than just my name and a grin, kid. I think you owe me enough rounds of drinks that I end up sleeping it all off under a table, for starters, and let me tell you, that’s a lot of drinking. How long have you been awake, and why’d I have to find out by stumbling across this lovely young Shepherd out in the wilderness?”

He tipped a wink toward Mirei. She felt her face grow hot and turned away in order to pay very close attention to stowing her weapon away on her belt. Zaveid…she recognized that name. It wasn’t particularly well-recorded, but there were scattered mentions of a wind seraph by that name who cropped up now and again after the Age of Chaos as a Sub Lord of this Shepherd or that, always serving under the Lady of the Lake, very often alongside an unnamed water seraph, once or twice with an earth seraph called Edna - more if the unnamed earth seraphs in other records were the very same.

Glancing up under her lashes as she pretended to fuss with a fastening, she wondered if the unnamed water seraph might have been Mikleo. They all seemed familiar enough with one another for it.

“It hasn’t been _that_ long, Zaveid,” Sorey was protesting, “and I was going to try to find you soon anyhow; I just got to these two first.”

“I’ll admit that I’m not an easy guy to find, but neither is Mik-kiddo here. I get the impression that you like him and Lailah more than me. Can’t fault you on the last count, though. Tell me, Sorey my friend, how is it I always seem to find you and Mickey-boy in the company of lovely ladies?”

“Maybe because we don’t treat them like pieces of meat,” Mikleo said, stiff as a board, “and how old do I have to be before you stop calling me childish names?”

Zaveid tipped his hat up and surveyed Mikleo critically.

“Older,” he finally said, letting the hat drop and ignoring the disgruntled noises Mikleo was making. “So, you were going to try finding me, huh? I don’t suppose it’s purely because you missed your old friends?”

“Of course I missed you,” Sorey said. Zaveid tilted his head.

“ _Purely_ for that reason?”

“Wow it’s bright out here. Feels nice; I could take a nap.”

“Oh no you don’t, sleepyhead. You’ve gotten too much as it is,” Zaveid ordered. Then his stance relaxed and he shook his head with a sigh. “That serious, huh?”

“What’s serious?” Sorey asked, blinking owlishly.

“What’re we looking at here, Lailah?” Zaveid asked. “You think this is just your standard type oath, or is this maybe more like what you went through before? Cuz if it’s what you went through before, then I’ve got a bad feeling to go with it.”

“It’s hard to say,” Lailah said, curling her hand against her mouth in thought. “He seems to be forbidden to speak of how or why he awakened, or why he’s sought us out beyond missing us. He specifically needed to find and form a pact with a Shepherd as well, but never gave a reason. The purification of the land also seems to be a touchy subject - he can mention it, but he can’t seem to _remark_ much upon it. If there’s anything else, we haven’t stumbled across it, and of course he can’t bring it up.”

“Any idea what he gets out of it?” Zaveid asked. Lailah shook her head.

“I might have a theory,” Mikleo said, glancing to where Sorey was leaning against a rock and humming to himself, eyes on the sky. He lowered his voice a bit. “He’s a seraph, but he remembers us all, and more. We thought before that it might be because he became one in an unusual way, but the oath could be part of that for all we know.”

“Seraphim make oaths; oaths don’t make seraphim,” Zaveid scoffed. “Good try, though.”

“Normally, no, but remember that there were extenuating circumstances, and very unique ones as far as we can tell.”

“Or perhaps it could have something to do with his element,” Lailah suggested. “He seems to be affiliated with some form of light. That could be natural, though, however unusual it is. I also sometimes wonder if his addition to the group boosted my own powers of purification, though I could be mistaken.”

“So basically we’ve got possibilities, but no clear answers, and the one guy who knows for sure can’t talk? Well, that sounds pretty par for the course for saving the world.” Zaveid tipped his hat back again and heaved a put-upon sigh. “All right, I see where this is headed. C’mon, Lailah, let’s have that pact.”

“Mirei?”

She glanced back at Sorey, then nodded. “All right. If there’s something happening and we need him, then okay. I trust you, Lailah.”

Sorey was still staring up at the sky.

 

-

 

“What’s your dream as a Shepherd?”

Sorey looked strange in darkness. Shadows seemed to slip away from him; even at night he always seemed somehow brighter than his surroundings, as though he caught every glimmer of light cast from the sky and reflected it back more intensely than before.

It made the darkness around him oddly more intense as well.

“Well…a Shepherd’s duty is to quell hellions and purify malevolence, to help the hurt and the suffering so that more doesn’t easily rise…”

Sorey was shaking his head.

“That’s your duty as a Shepherd,” he said, “but what’s your dream? What do you want to achieve?”

Answers lined up in Mirei’s mind. Instead, her mouth framed a question of her own.

“What was yours?”

Sorey looked surprised for a moment, then his expression fell into the smile that had become so familiar in such a short time.

“What gave it away?”

“The others talk about you like you weren’t a seraph once, but you became one,” Mirei said, curling her arms around her knees and looking into the campfire. She could feel Mikleo, Lailah, and Zaveid inside her soul, watching and listening, though none interfered. “You’ve talked like that, too, sometimes. There are legends about humans becoming benevolent spirits or ascendant beings, so it’s possible these are actually talking about humans turning into seraphim somehow. And your cloak has different colors and patterns, but it’s still sort of Shepherd-ish.”

“Clever,” he said, picking up a stick to poke at the fire. “And fair enough. I wanted to see all the places mentioned in the Celestial Record. I wanted to explore ruins, to walk where people so far in the past we couldn’t even remember them had walked before. And I still want that, but I also wanted to make things better for everyone, and eventually that came first.”

It was her turn.

“I want…I wanted to read, mostly. To see the continental library at Marlind and all the other great libraries and universities as well. I want to learn all about the world and the people in it. But I think I also want to help people as well, and if I can use what I learn to do that, then all the better. I never really wanted to fight, but I’ll do that too, if I have to.”

They sat and watched the fire crackle for a while. Finally Sorey stood up and stretched before fixing her with a gentle look.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll do fine.”

Then he darted as light into her soul, and Mirei was left seemingly alone with the campfire and the muted hum of four seraphic minds nestled inside her own.

 

-

 

They had to backtrack again to go to Spiritcrest Mountain and find Edna. Mikleo asked why Sorey hadn’t said something while they were at least in the area; Sorey said that he hadn’t thought about her being there at the time. Zaveid asked why it was important to get the gang back together and Sorey started talking about the quality of stone in the area and what ancient architectural styles favored it.

Edna…Mirei honestly wasn’t certain if Edna was pleased to see them or not.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Finally decided to get up? Sure you don’t need another five centuries?”

“You never change, do you Edna?” Sorey asked.

“I’ve gotten taller,” said the seraph girl. “And almost certainly more beautiful. How kind of you to notice.”

“I noticed,” said Zaveid, sidling up to her side. Edna closed her umbrella and swung without looking; the wind seraph barely dodged.

“Did you have to bring him here?”

“He sort of happened on us along the way. Here, Edna, this is Mirei, our new Shepherd. Mirei, Edna, an old friend.”

“I see,” Edna said, twirling her umbrella over her shoulder. “Are you here for a reason?”

“Reason? No reason, who needs a reason?”

“Sorey’s under an oath,” Mirei said. “We don’t know what it is, but there are things he can’t tell us. We’re pretty sure there _is_ a reason, though.”

“Things are never simple with him, are they?” Edna asked. Mirei didn’t think she was looking for an answer. “Tell me, Sorey, how’s the earthpulse?”

He tilted his head and gave his best confused owl impression.

“Sorry, what now?”

“Is the land fully purified? Kittybeard’s mess all cleaned up? It’s been feeling a lot better recently, but is it all done?”

“You know, I think I saw a new cavern on the way up; let’s go check it out.” Sorey turned and began to wander back down the path.

“Well, so much for that,” Edna said.

“We can’t just jump to conclusions,” Mikleo admonished. “Sorey can’t seem to say anything about the state of purification, good or bad, and if it wasn’t done, then why would he be awake at all?”

“Why would he not be allowed to say anything if it was finished?” Edna asked. “And who knows if something went wrong. Use your brain Meebo. Something’s going on here, and because he’s in the middle of it, now we’re all in the middle of it. I’m guessing that’s why we’re having a big reunion after all this time, at least.”

“I don’t understand,” Mirei admitted. “Records and legends all mention many Shepherds who travelled with more than just their Prime Lord, and some of these seem to be about you four, unless I misread them, but these never involved cataclysms or disasters. Why would this time be different?”

“Because it’s Sorey,” Edna murmured, “and because all those times we came together because we felt like it. We weren’t gathered on purpose.”

“It does feel very intentional,” Lailah said.

“Let’s face it: the guy who knows more than he’s allowed to let on is pulling together some serious power,” Zaveid added. “Now maybe half of it’s because of nostalgia or some kind of better-safe-than-sorry overkill, but I’m willing to bet that it’s not because we’re all invited to a secret tea party.”

“I’ll go find him,” Mikleo said, heading down the path Sorey had wandered toward only a minute before. “Lailah, get Edna her pact in the meantime.”

“We don’t take orders from you, bossy Meebo. Beebo.”

“Or don’t, then, see if I care!”

One pact, one name, and one gauntlet later, Mirei went down from the mountain, five sparks of power in her soul and more questions than she could ask burning in her mind.

 

-

 

They thought she was asleep. She had been, at least until the sound of their voices roused her. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop; she just was already awake and listening before she was fully aware of either fact, and then she lay still and silent as if by feigning sleep she could immediately drop off.

“How did you do it, Lailah?” Sorey had asked, somewhere on the edge of her awareness. He didn’t sound cheerful this time, or determined, or even softly sad. He sounded like someone trying to hold together something that threatened to be forever lost if his grip so much as slipped. “Back when we were bumbling around and you couldn’t tell us what we faced or why without taking away what we needed to face it in the first place.”

“I’m not sure; it wasn’t ever easy,” Lailah replied. “I wanted to give you certainty so many times, but I couldn’t. In the end, I had to have faith, and you more than fulfilled it.”

Sorey laughed. It was strained at the edges.

“I finally figured out your odd reactions to things, at least. Nothing calls attention to the questions being asked around an oath like going off on an obvious tangent. I used to think that was all compulsion.”

“Some of it was, of course. You know that. There’s always that tug to obey your oath…but yes, you’re right, I did sometimes play it up a little bit. We can always choose to break our oaths, after all; no compulsion in the world can fully remove that choice.”

“Do you think it’s working?”

“Maybe,” Lailah said. “I don’t know what you know, of course, but we are asking questions we might not have otherwise, and we have all come together. I would assume that this is more than we might have had without you.”

“I just gotta have faith, huh?”

“Is that so hard?”

“Not in you guys. I know you, and I’ve gotten to know Mirei. I’m just not sure about myself. I’m as old as Mikleo, technically, but I slept through most of it. He was out there exploring the world, learning new things. I’m…I still feel like I’m just a kid, sometimes. I barely know what I’m doing.”

“Sorey…never doubt yourself. Remember what you have achieved, and remember the wisdom and selflessness that took. You decided your own path then; I’m sure you can handle your part in whatever is happening now.

“Don’t worry. You’ll do just fine.”

They spoke no more after that, and slowly the steady crackle of the fire carried Mirei back to sleep.

 

-

 

Halfway through Volgrun, Lailah asked for a detour.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” she said. Mirei shook her head.

“It’s not. I’m not on a timetable; in fact, I’m sure I’m already moving faster than some, despite our backtracking.”

“It _is_ more about the journey than the destination. I’ll guide you; turn left on the next path.”

The road to Lastonbell through the forest was relatively wide and rather clearly marked; Mirei wouldn’t have chanced it in the dark herself, but in bright daylight it wasn’t bad at all. The paths Lailah guided her onto were much trickier, narrowing at intervals, crossed by the thin pathways trod by wild animals, skirting trees and stones and trickling creeks. Sometimes it faded so completely that had Lailah not assured her she was still going the right way, Mirei might have thought herself utterly lost.

In a sense, she _was_ utterly lost. She had no idea where she was, or where she was going, though she got the impression that Lailah aside, three of the remaining four seraphim piggybacking in her soul knew their destination full well. An anticipatory silence gathered in her mind, growing thicker the further she walked; only Sorey felt more curious than solemn, though he wasn’t immune to the mood either. After an hour of walking, he appeared to walk behind her.

“It was getting stuffy in there,” he said, shrugging apologetically. Mirei offered him a wan smile. They kept going.

In time, the trees grew thin, and more light reached them. There was a new smell in the air - faint at first, growing stronger the further they went; it reminded Mirei of the heavily salted fish sold in market. A sound like constant rushing wind filled her ears. She pressed on, broke through the treeline, and stopped.

She had seen the sea before, once or twice. She had grown up in a town a few hours’ walk away from the shore, a few hours’ walk away from here. This place, however, was especially beautiful; a grassy promontory, rising high in the wind to overlook the sea far, far below. A stone stood upon the highest point. Mirei wondered, and then wondered more when Lailah prodded her toward it.

Sorey was silent all the way there.

The face of the stone was worn and pitted, hardly recognizable as a grave marker. If there had ever been a name, a date, a line of remembrance carved on its face, it was long lost to the wind. If Sorey recognized it regardless, he gave no sign. Four more lights flew from Mirei’s soul and landed behind him.

Mirei withdrew to the base of the rise to wait; she didn’t feel right standing there with those who knew one another of old, in front of an ancient grave. The rush of wind and wave was loud enough to mask any conversation among them, and she stood with her back turned, effecting the appearance of a guard, though there was nothing to guard them from.

Finally, she felt them return. She prepared to walk back, waiting only on instructions from Lailah.

“ _Her name was Rose,”_ Sorey said instead. “ _She was a Shepherd, and a friend. Thank you.”_

Mirei swallowed, nodded, and headed toward the trees. Behind her, a solitary gravestone remained high in the wind, pitted and ancient, but with a name carved anew upon it.


	3. Chapter 3

The city stood open and welcoming, great bells chiming the hour as they approached. The air was clean and clear, improving their moods despite the start to the day; Sorey materialized just inside the gate, opening his arms and turning circles in the courtyard.

“It looks so different,” he said, “but I can still see some influences from our time in the patterning of the flagstones, and the structure of the bell towers, and - oh! The monolith’s still there!”

The other seraphim materialized, Mikleo taking off with Sorey to explore the immediate area.

“Children,” Edna said, spinning her umbrella and looking more like a child than any of them.

“Eh, let them have their fun, take their minds off things,” Zaveid said. “Speaking of which, I’m looking forward to spending the night in the inn; the innkeeper’s family around here’s had resonance for a couple hundred years now, and as long as that’s held strong I’ll actually be able to order drinks myself. It’s been too long. Join me, Lailah?”

“Thank you, Zaveid, but I’ll pass. Do enjoy yourself, though.”

“I think I will, thanks.”

“Wait, if you drink and then come back to my head, will I get the hangover?” Mirei asked.

“Ha! You’re asking the real questions. Answer’s no; I don’t get drunk easy, but I don’t suffer the next morning either, so don’t worry about your pretty little head around Zaveid. That said, I’m heading back in for now; I’ll need to rest up for tonight!”

“I’m going too. There’s nothing to interest me here,” Edna added. The two seraphim vanished in sparks of light, leaving Mirei and Lailah alone in the middle of the bustling courtyard, though only for moments; Mikleo and Sorey circled back, the former pointing out various features of the buildings around them and dating them to this era or that while the latter nodded along.

“Well, they’re going to be at this for a while,” Lailah said. “What do you say we do a little exploring of our own? I understand the Sanctuary has expanded its collection of books since the last time I was here.”

It was a distraction for all of them, Mirei knew. Still, there was nothing wrong with a distraction now and then…and perhaps, just perhaps, it would help.

“I’d love to.”

 

-

 

“This is where we met Sergei - remember?”

“How could I forget? Mirei, word of advice: don’t have Lailah tell a lie for you.”

“That wasn’t entirely my fault! You’re the one who did most of it, if I recall.”

“That’s true, but I’m not sure it would’ve gone that far or in that direction without those nudges on your parts.”

Mikleo suddenly smiled and leaned forward.

“Say, Mirei, you wouldn’t happen to know about the Ballad of the Shepherd’s Rose?”

It seemed like an odd jump in conversation, but Mirei followed along gamely.

“I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t actually read any of the oldest versions,” she said. “I’m more familiar with newer adaptations, like Numin’s The Lady of Flowers. Why?”

“Sorey’s never heard it,” Mikleo said. “Can you paraphrase the tale at least?”

“I suppose so,” Mirei said, awkwardly clearing her throat as she gathered her thoughts. “It was said that at the end of the Age of Chaos, the Lost Shepherd, the son of a minor lord, met a beautiful young woman, a daughter of merchants, who is often likened to a rose in description. The two fell deeply in love, but his parents did not approve of her standing among the lower merchant class. Despite his duties as nobility, he cast off both title and fortune to be with her, but then her parents refused him, as they wanted to see their daughter settled and cared-for, and a mere wandering Shepherd, no matter how powerful, could not provide that. In the end, she ran away to be with him, and he with her. They faced many hardships together, and when he was lost in battle with the darkness, she took up his mantle and carried on his mission alone.”

Sorey looked torn between laughing and burying his face in his hands; he compromised with a wry smile and a slowly shaking head. Mikleo, by contrast, appeared far too pleased with himself.

“Do you know the name of the Ballad’s original author?” he asked her. She shook her head.

“I remember that he was a poet-knight of Rolance, but that’s all.”

“I know it: Sergei Strelka.”

“Wait, Sergei wrote poetry?” Sorey asked.

“In his later years, yes,” Lailah said. “He actually became quite famous for it, especially for his romantic ballads! He revolutionized the way in which star-crossed lovers are written; the romances of this day owe much to his striking blends of poem and prose.”

Mirei snapped her fingers, eyes lighting up with remembered knowledge.

“Is that where the word ‘strelketic,’ as in strelketic meter, comes from?”

“Yes, it is! Though of course, the term itself didn’t come into popular usage until some time after his passing,” Lailah said. “Still, I believe the form became fairly popular in other genres of poetry for a time, like epics written to recall battles between Shepherds and hellions. Its extensive use in all subjects relating to Shepherds for this period actually gave it the alternate names ‘shepherds verse’ or ‘seraphic verse,’ interestingly enough.”

“It’s not my personal favorite, but I’ve heard others talk about it in the library back home,” Mirei admitted. “They like to go on about things like order in chaos and purposefully interrupted strike patterns. You kind of pick things up, I guess. Now I’m curious though: how much of that story was true?”

“To Sergei? All of it,” Mikleo said.

“Sergei wanted to believe it so badly,” Sorey added, his hand in his hair yet again. “It made him happy to think of people being that much in love despite the world working against them. I’m actually glad he wrote it, just because he got to spread that happiness to others in turn.”

 _It was about you,_ Mirei thought in a sudden flash of insight. She didn’t say it, but she held onto the idea of it all the same, turning it over in her mind like a puzzle into which pieces suddenly began to slot. The Celestial Record, which came into existence less than half a century before the Age of Calamity and which was revised for the first time less than a hundred years after. A former Shepherd, who became a seraph who slept for long ages - what was it they hinted at? Purifying the earth itself? A personal familiarity with Alisha the Radiant and Strelka the poet-knight, both prominent figures of this time, and a personal reaction to the latter’s most famous ballad.

Sorey, the Lost Shepherd, who fell fighting the malevolence, fell to end the Age of Chaos.

Sorey the Shepherd returned as Sorey the Dreamer, the seraph, for reasons yet unknown.

Mirei watched him laugh as Mikleo gently teased Lailah for her suspiciously extensive knowledge of romantic poetry and prose, and she thought that this truth suited him.

 

-

 

The sense of malevolence was not a concrete, unchanging thing; every Shepherd experienced it differently, according to personal records left behind. Some felt it as the rise of nausea in their throat, others as a weight growing on their chest. Some heard discordant sounds, ringing or shrieking between their ears. Some tasted it in the air. A few reported odd shifts in vision, beyond the common appearance of malevolence to all with the resonance to see.

Mirei smelled rot and mold, at once like and unlike books left too long in the dark and the damp, with a strange acrid note that sat on the back of her tongue.

She didn’t expect to sense it while crossing farmland between Lastonbell and Pendrago, nor did she expect to hear roars, or see purple flecks of shadow rising from behind a house. And in all her life, she never before would have expected herself to run toward the danger without a second thought.

Of course, she was more accustomed to fighting now, and being backed up by five powerful seraphim helped.

When the malevolence cleared, however, it left questions behind.

“That’s Harris’ dog!” said the farmer they’d rescued. “I’d recognize it anywhere. Why would it attack us like that?”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll try to find out,” Mirei said. “Could you tell me where I can find Harris?”

Harris, as it turned out, was a near neighbor, at least by the standards of farmland. But while the first farm had full fields of golden wheat and buildings in good repair, Harris’ seemed more run-down, with poor fields and fences held together with little more than spit and wishes.

“Bad irrigation,” Mikleo said, appearing beside her. “There’s a drainage problem in that field. I can feel it; the water gathers but has nowhere to go, so it festers and spoils half his crop.”

“It must be difficult, having such bad luck in the middle of so much good,” Mirei commented, turning down the scruffy path that led to the farmer’s house. A couple of scrawny chickens clucked at her in the yard.

“It probably led to selfish envy,” Edna commented, “and then his emotions might have corrupted his dog. The closer a companion an animal is to a human, the more easily it’s twisted by that human’s malevolence. Such a shame.”

“Do you think he’ll be a hellion too?” Mirei asked, though the tang of malevolent rot in the air seemed, to her, too weak for that, more like a scent left behind than one being actively produced.

“Do you?”

“I don’t know.”

She knocked on the door.

Harris was not whatever she had expected. He was middle-aged, perhaps, and might have been tall if not for the stoop in his posture. He was thin, half his hair gone, and weathered by nature and hard work. There were more lines on his face from stress than from laughter. Yet he was not malevolent, and when his gaze caught Mirei’s cloak his eyes widened in awed surprise.

“Shepherd! Please, come in - how may I help you?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have the best news,” Mirei said, stepping inside. Mikleo came in after her, tilting his head at the farmer. Harris never noticed the seraph. “It’s your dog. He was hurt, though not badly; Bruta and his family, just up the road, are taking care of him until he is well enough to come back.”

“No…what happened?”

Mirei hesitated.

“Tell him the truth,” Mikleo advised, his eyes on a corner of the small house. Mirei followed the line of his gaze to see a household shrine, better cared for than anything else in the room, and standing in the shadows beside it, a seraph dressed in red.

“You’re devout?”

“I try,” said Harris, “though I doubt my prayers are much to the seraphim.”

“They _are_ much,” said the strange seraph in the corner. His expression was miserable.

“Your dog was…briefly infected by malevolence. He’s been purified now, and will be fine once he recovers from the shock. Don’t worry; it probably won’t happen again.”

Harris squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. The fire seraph’s breath hitched; he pressed himself further back, as though hoping the shadows would swallow him.

“Thank you, Shepherd,” Harris said. “I’m sorry you were put to any trouble. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No, not a scratch,” Mirei said. Technically this was true; she was bruised and sore, but had managed to avoid the claws and teeth at least. “And it’s no trouble, really. I’m just glad I could help at all.”

“Still, I can’t believe it. Max has always been such a sweet boy - how could he be corrupted?”

“It’s not his fault; animals are almost never infected by their own natures,” Mirei quickly assured him. “Usually there’s an outside influence at work. I’m not sure what it is, but I’ll try to find out, I promise.”

“There has been a rash of bad luck hitting the region lately,” Harris said. “Fences falling over, insects ruining crops, wild animals getting in and trampling whatever they don’t eat…an entire coop of chickens went insane a week ago, and somehow managed to start a fire and destroy half a house before everyone managed to drive them off.”

“Ask if any of that bad luck has hit him,” Mikleo said, still watching the fire seraph in the corner. Mirei relayed the question to Harris, who laughed sadly.

“I wouldn’t know if it did,” he said. “It’s always been poor harvests and ill fortune for me. I get by, though. I always have.”

Mirei promised again to investigate, turning down Harris’ offers of food and drink, though she suggested he look into the drainage in his lower field. On her way out, she heard Mikleo tell the unknown seraph they needed to talk, right away, in private, and so she headed around to the back of the house, out of human view.

The fire seraph phased through the back wall just as Mirei’s Prime and Sub Lords appeared around her; he was crying, and as soon as he saw them he fell to his knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was my fault.”

“I thought seraphim can’t emit malevolence unless they’ve fallen,” Mirei said, “and you don’t look or feel like a hellion to me. How can it be your fault?”

“I just wanted to bless him,” the seraph cried. “He tries, and he’s so devout. I just wanted him to have the same success as…”

Lailah made a small noise of understanding, one hand rising to her mouth.

“You’re an angel of death,” Mikleo said. The fire seraph burst into new sobs and curled over his knees.

“He’s a what?” Mirei asked.

“Sometimes seraphim don’t or can’t give proper blessings,” Zaveid volunteered. “Whether they intend it or not, it winds up bad for humans some way or another - making bad luck, attracting malevolence or hellions, all that stuff we just love to deal with.”

“Oh. So, when he tried to give Harris as much success as anyone else…”

“He wound up making it so that everyone else got Harris’ success. Or lack thereof, I guess.”

“An even playing field, but one set to the lowest common denominator,” Mikleo surmised.

“Angels of death often become dragons in the end,” Edna murmured, her umbrella tilted to hide half her face. “All that malevolence their blessings tend to stir up usually gets to them sooner or later. And even if they resist that, they’ll usually end up isolating themselves completely, living apart from both seraphim and humans. Or maybe not living…just existing.”

The fire seraph’s sobs turned to hiccups formed around apologies. He pressed his forehead into the dusty earth.

“Can we do anything to help him?” Mirei asked, looking around at her companions. Lailah looked to the ground. Edna hid fully under her umbrella. Mikleo looked grim. Zaveid shook his head.

Sorey smiled, looked up, and said, “Wow. Isn’t it a nice day today?”

“Wait, we _can?”_ Mikleo said. “Since _when_?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That oath of yours is a pain in the ass,” Zaveid said. “So, what, we’re supposed to look for some way to change what kind of blessing a seraph can give? Cuz let me tell you, I’ve been around longer and in more places than you think, and I’ve never even heard of something like that.”

“You can change it?” the fire seraph said, lifting his tearstained face.

“I don’t know,” Mirei said. “I don’t know _how_.”

“Please, I’ll do anything!” he said, pitching forward again in a desperate bow. Mirei took a step back. “If you can make it so my blessing stops _hurting_ people, I’ll do whatever you ask!”

“There’s no need for that,” Mirei said. “Please stand up! Sorey, can’t you tell us anything?”

“I have faith in you,” he said. “If you need me, I’ll be just over there.”

“We just gonna let our sounding board walk off?” Zaveid asked, watching Sorey amble away to a point just out of easy earshot.

“He doesn’t want to risk saying too much by accident,” Lailah said. “It’s hard, bearing such an oath.”

“No kidding. Okay, anything we can figure out here and now?”

“Sorey knows something about a way to help angels of death,” Mikleo said. “Whether it’s a technique we’ve always had access to but never applied or something completely new is anybody’s guess.”

“My money’s on something new, and our boy Sorey having it. Who knows what that nap of his did to him?”

“If he had that kind of power, though, wouldn’t he have used it?”

“Not if he couldn’t on his own,” Edna pointed out. “Like seraphim and the power to purify hellions…maybe there are conditions.”

“Like a human’s involvement, perhaps.” Mikleo glanced at Mirei.

“He did mention needing a Shepherd when he came looking for me,” Lailah said.

“But what about the rest of us, then? You don’t exactly need tons of fighting power if your mission is just finding angels of death and giving them a hand.”

“We still don’t know what it involves, or if there’s a deeper issue. ‘Tons of power’ might be exactly what is needed.”

“Can you think of anything, Mirei?” Lailah asked.

“No, not really. I did think of armatizing with him, but I can’t think of anything I’ve done in his armatization that seems any different from artes I do armatized with anyone else - element aside, at least.”

“There’s got to be a way to do whatever needs to be done,” Mikleo said. “We just have to find it.”

“We could just have Mirei arm up, stand this unlucky bastard in the middle of an empty field somewhere, and let loose.”

The fire seraph went pale.

“He’s not a hellion,” Mirei protested. “What if I hurt him?”

“What if,” Lailah said, her hand curled before her mouth in thought, “instead of treating the arte as though it were to be used in battle…what if we tried treating it like a kind of healing instead?”

“Healing artes only fix immediate or surface damage sustained in a fight,” Mikleo said. “I’ve never heard of them doing anything more.”

“I don’t mean she should use a healing arte. I mean…perhaps there’s a way to use a purification arte as though it were meant for healing: gently.”

“I’m not sure what’s gentle about sticking someone with a thousand spears of light, but okay, sure, could be worth a shot. You wanna give this a try, then?”

The fire seraph swallowed and wobbled a little on his feet.

“We don’t have to,” Mirei assured him. “At least not today. We could go and search some more, give it a little more thought, maybe even experiment if possible, and then come back when we’re certain. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No! No, I’ll…it’s worth a try. I mean,” he swallowed and tried to smile, “what’s the worst that could happen?”

“You could die.”

“Edna!”

“Just being honest. Forcing an entire arte’s worth of elemental power through him when there’s no malevolence to purify, even if you’re ‘gentle,’ _could_ kill him, especially if it’s a dominant element to his own. It might not, though; that’s only the worst case scenario.”

“Nah. There’re things worse than death,” Zaveid said. He tipped the brim of his hat up to better look at the fire seraph. “You, buddy, just need to decide if this is worth the risk. No doubts or regrets. Got it?”

“I…yes. I’ve got it. I don’t want to live alone, unable to give my blessing to anyone. I also don’t want to continue to hurt people, or become a dragon. If there’s a chance, then I’ll take it.”

“…could you tell us your name?” Lailah asked.

“Gael,” he said, wiping the last traces of tears from his face, “and thank you.”

 

-

 

Mirei wished that Sorey would give her some kind of sign that this was the right thing to do. She understood that he couldn’t say anything, but a smile at the very least would go a long way. Instead, when presented with their plan, he just blinked and said that it was their choice - Mirei’s and Gael’s. Mirei hoped she was just imagining that the expression that crossed his face in the span of that blink was surprise. She could think of too many ways surprise could bode ill for them.

They went together to the peaceful, grassy plain of the Meadow of Triumph, distant enough from farms and city alike that they wouldn’t risk hurting any bystanders if it all went far, far worse than they imagined. There, between the ruins of the leaning towers, Gael and Mirei faced one another and found themselves waiting for a sign.

Sorey appeared between them and extended a hand to Gael. For an unthinking instant she thought she was about to see the ceremony to bind a Squire to her - it was a sight she had seen before - but Sorey just grasped the other seraph’s hand and nodded. Mirei couldn’t tell if it was a comforting promise of safety or a final salute.

“Ready?” he asked them. Mirei took a deep breath. If this was wrong, if it was _too_ dangerous, he’d say something, surely. She nodded, covered her mouth with one hand, and whispered his true name.

The armatus wrapped itself around her in a flash of silky white, silver and gold. She looked at Gael, white-faced and breathing too evenly for it, then at the spear in her hand.

If it were a hellion, this part would be simple. She’d done it before, guided mostly by instincts not her own: leap up, spin the spear to gather energy, shout the focusing words and throw it forward with just the right twist to shatter it into a multitude of thin, sharp shafts, all of them flying down to pepper the field. The malevolence would be purified so quickly under the light of Sorey’s artes that Mirei never felt it touch her the way it sometimes did when she armatized with the others. Quick and painless for all involved, in the end, the reason why this was her favorite arte in the field.

But this wasn’t a hellion, a malevolence-driven beast on the attack. This was a seraph, resolute despite his fear, and so Mirei turned the spear over, stabbed it into the ground, and let it stand there. She hoped this would work instead.

“May I have your hands?” she asked, holding her own out. Gael set his hands on hers, and she gripped his fingers lightly.

“Ready?”

He nodded and closed his eyes. Mirei shut hers as well, took a breath so deep it felt like her mind was rising on the air she took in, spinning on itself, gathering energy…

“Cleansing tempest,” she whispered, and where she usually threw with force she now only pressed.

Energy flowed down her arms, through her fingers, and into his. She opened her eyes to see the light building around them both, brilliant as lightning, flowing like water, wrapping around Shepherd and seraph like wings and wind, steady as the earth and...

Burning.

The world went white.


	4. Chapter 4

She opened her eyes and saw brown. Two muzzy-headed blinks later, and the brown resolved itself into strips of wood stretching overhead - unfamiliar in detail, but instantly recognizable as a ceiling at least.

“Mirei? Are you awake?”

She turned her head slowly on the pillow. Mikleo sat beside the bed, his notebook open in his lap and a fountain pen in his hand. His gloves were off; she didn’t see where they went.

“Y…” she rasped. Mikleo shut his book and picked up a cup instead. It was full of water, though Mirei wasn’t sure if it had been poured from the pitcher before she woke or if Mikleo had done some minor arte when she blinked. She sat up, took the cup from him, and drained it.

“Maybe since you’re awake now, this one’ll join us as well,” Mikleo said, nodding at the other bed in the room. Sorey rested there, limbs tucked in close and still. “Honestly, you’d think he would’ve gotten more than enough sleep by now, all things considered.”

“What happened?”

“In some ways, we’re actually not sure. You used the arte. Everything seemed normal at first, if a little drawn out, but then it turned strange…it almost felt like you were drawing on all of our powers as well as Sorey’s, though we were never armatized. Then, the next thing any of us knew we’d been ejected by force. You kept your feet for a moment before you and Sorey split apart and collapsed. It’s been…a little less than thirty-six hours, I think.”

“What about Gael?” Mirei asked, though she dreaded the answer. Now Mikleo would open his mouth and tell her--

“He’s all right, as far as any of us can tell.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He only woke up an hour ago, but he said he felt fine. We can’t be sure if it actually worked until he tries to work a blessing again, but at least it didn’t cause any immediate damage.”

Mirei slumped back against her pillow and released the breath she’d been holding.

“Where are we?” she asked eventually, looking around at the walls in search of anything familiar.

“A small inn, in Pendrago,” Mikleo said. “We found one just inside the gates, so that we didn’t have to carry you all too far. Luckily the innkeeper’s son had just enough resonance to hear us so that we could arrange the room, plus an extra cot for Gael.”

“Oh. Well, I suppose if we’re here, then that’s my pilgrimage just about over.”

“Nothing beyond Pendrago?”

“Nothing formal. It _is_ also tradition for any Shepherd lucky enough to discover an earthen historia to make a journey to Lohgrin, and some visit the tower even without a gem, but that’ s usually done later in your time as Shepherd.”

“Any idea what you’ll do next, then?”

“I’m not sure,” Mirei admitted. “Some Shepherds find specific quests. Others just wander wherever the wind takes them, so to speak. I suppose I might have a quest myself, if what we did with Gael worked and if we can find other angels of death, but I’m not sure I have a direction, and I don’t know if that’s all Sorey came back for.”

“Whatever Sorey came back for is _his_ task, even if he needs a human vessel to complete it,” Mikleo said. “You can make it yours as well if you choose, but that’s still entirely your choice. Like Lailah said to us, a long time ago, you need to find your own answers. So with that in mind, what do you want to do?”

“I want…right now, I want to see the library, both the one at the church and the one at the university here,” Mirei said. “I want to see if I can find something, and if I can’t find it here then I’ll keep looking elsewhere. There’s something I want to try to figure out before anything else.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“What’re we doing?”

Mirei sat up to see Sorey looking at them with sleepy eyes.

“It’s about time!” Mikleo huffed. “How is it that even after you get centuries of sleep, I still end up having to carry you unconscious into inns?”

“I don’t know. Where are we? What happened?”

“If you’d woken up just a few minutes ago, you’d know. I just finished telling Mirei.”

“That’s not fair, Mikleo! I can’t help how long I sleep or when I wake up.”

“At least it was only a day and a half this time,” Mirei pointed out with a faint smile. She pushed the blanket back and swung her legs over the side of the bed, searching for her boots.

“Where are you going?”

“To find food, and then to the shrinechurch library. I want to start looking right away.”

“Looking for what?” Sorey asked as Mirei tugged her boots on.

“Answers.”

 

-

 

The shrinechurch library of Pendrago, while incomparable to the continental library of Marlind, was impressively large, taking up an entire three story gallery plus underground archives. The stacks included books on everything from agriculture to zoology; entire sections were dedicated to the study and practice of artes, to history, to science, to literature and more.

The books on seraphic lore filled one long, lonely aisle tucked between the mysterious and the legendary. Compared to the rest of the library, it was a mere drop in a bucket of water, but there were still at least a couple hundred tomes to sift through in that aisle alone.

“We’ll help,” Mikleo said, phasing into the world beside her. Sorey followed, as did Lailah. Zaveid and Edna had remained at the inn, the former enjoying himself too much to leave and the latter claiming no interest in the library and a need to make sure the wind seraph didn’t get into too much trouble on his own. “What are we looking for?”

“Anything on the study of seraphic artes, blessings, powers and natures,” Mirei said, “especially anything which might allude to angels of death. I’m also after anything on the malevolence and purification abilities, though I’m not sure if we’ll find that here or in the Shepherd lore an aisle over. Just in case.”

“That’s…quite a lot,” Lailah said.

“I’ll narrow it down once I get a better idea of the shape of things. What I’m looking for probably won’t exist in clear-cut terms if no one’s ever heard of whatever it is we attempted out there.”

“Do you really think we’ll find anything here, in a human library, when ancient seraphim don’t know anything about what we’re trying to do?” Mikleo asked.

“Shepherd Raine once figured out the true purpose of ancient crucibles and how to permanently disarm them by studying changes in legends from before and after their time of origin,” Mirei recalled, “and scholars have decoded seraphic glyphs by comparing them to human writing systems found alongside them in ruins. Seraphim might have long lives and memories, but humans have books and stories for that, and sometimes you can get a more complete picture out of a hundred fractured accounts than from a single, whole, but limited point of view.”

“That’s fair,” Sorey said, “and in that case I’ll go looking for anything people have written about malevolence - you said the books about Shepherds are over here?”

“Probably, yes,” Mirei said, tugging a couple of promising titles from the shelf. “Most libraries use about the same system, and you don’t usually find the section on Shepherds very far from the one on seraphim. History should be just down from there as well, but if you find mythology instead you might’ve gone in the wrong direction.”

“All right, then. Hey, Mikleo, I bet I find something useful before you do.”

“That’s not fair,” the water seraph protested even as he followed Sorey down the aisle and around the corner. “You know what’s useful better than I do right now.”

“So I win by forfeit?”

“I never said that, just that it’s not fair!”

A shushing noise rang out from somewhere, and the two immediately quieted, bickering and teasing in indistinct whispers as they moved on in their search.

“Well, at least they’re enjoying themselves,” Lailah said softly, brushing a finger down a row of books.

“Lailah…” Mirei hesitated, then lowered her voice further. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Can you tell me how, exactly, oaths work?”

“What do you mean by ‘exactly?’”

“I mean…I understand the basics. A seraph or, sometimes, a human offers an oath, either to themselves or to another, making some particular act taboo in exchange for new or increased powers. I’m wondering about the mechanics of that exchange. Is it proportional - the greater the taboo, the greater the reward - and if so, what determines how ‘great’ either part is?”

“It depends very much on the individual, I’m afraid,” Lailah said carefully, folding her hands together. “Oaths are often deeply personal, as is the worth one places on whatever is given and received. In general, though, you might be able to assume that the sacrifice is somehow equal to the reward.”

“So, in theory, let’s say someone wants or is granted powers of prophecy for an oath. Would a taboo directly tied to those powers make them stronger than one completely separate? Like swearing never to tell others of what you foresee, versus swearing to give up eating your favorite food?”

“Perhaps. It’s a little hard to say, since there’s not really a way to gauge how strong an oath is, or how much this taboo or that might mean to a person. Your theorized prophet might want the power only for their own sake rather than for the sake of others, so being unable to speak of things foreseen may not be such a difficult thing to give up. Of course, what this means for the oath itself one could only guess. May I ask why you want to know?”

“I feel like we’re missing pieces,” Mirei said, shifting the books she already held in her arms. “Mostly it’s about Sorey. If what we did the other day really worked, then we managed something nobody thought was possible before. Maybe we were the first to try at all, but if others have tried and failed, then we had something they lacked, and if that something is Sorey himself, then I keep wondering if maybe it’s tied to his oath somehow. I’m just…I need to know before I do anything else.”

“Mirei,” Lailah said softly, “you don’t have to…”

“Maybe I do.”

Quiet pressed down on them, thick and full. Mirei tried to shuffle her leaping thoughts back in order.

“I know that I’m probably just a coincidence in this,” she said. “If Sorey came just a few years earlier, or who knows how much later, he would’ve been bound to a different Shepherd, and maybe they’d be dealing with this, or maybe not. But it is me, and I’m not sure I can just let this go or ignore it, even if it’s _not_ some kind of destiny.”

“Mirei…”

The suspicion she had been nursing bubbled up against her throat. She almost didn’t say it out loud, but only almost.

“Sorey was the Lost Shepherd, wasn’t he?”

“Why do you think that?” Lailah asked. Her words were too careful.

“A lot of things. His book. His cloak. His reactions to people like Alisha the Radiant and the poet Strelka. A woman in the poem who was called a rose and became a shepherd after he disappeared, and a long-gone Shepherd-friend _named_ Rose. Things you’ve all said here and there - you haven’t really been secretive about it.

“I know he’s been asleep for hundreds of years, and Edna said something about purifying the land. Did you know there’s a sort of prophecy added to the earliest editions of the Shepherd’s Journal? It doesn’t make it into most abridged prints these days because nobody really believes it, but it said that the Lost Shepherd never died, and that he would return once the land held no more malevolence. It was sort of my favorite part of the story when I was little. But he’s returned now, and there _is_ still malevolence in the land, and that makes me wonder.”

“Malevolence is a part of mankind,” Lailah said. “It can never truly be removed, not without destroying a fundamental part of humanity.”

“But in the _land_?” Mirei pressed. “The oldest records left by Shepherds mention plants and lifeless objects animated by malevolence, but those have all disappeared. Even animal-based hellions are rarer than they once were, especially in the wild, and there are only a handful of places where people don’t dare go now. Something’s changed for the better, but it’s not finished yet, and as happy as you all were to see him, his oath put you so on edge that now I’m walking around with _five_ seraphim bound to me by pact instead of just one or two. I know that he can’t talk about why he needs a Shepherd, or about the purification of the land, _or_ about how to change a seraph’s blessing so they’re not angels of death anymore, and unless he made two or three different oaths these have to be connected somehow, and if an oath’s power is tied to the effect of its taboo, then maybe whatever he needs to do is in there as well.”

“You’re determined to know…is that your answer?”

Mirei hugged the books closer to the front of her cloak.

“For now, yes.”

“All right. We’ll do our best to help you, then. And Mirei? Your knowledge of books and how to find the pieces of a puzzle in them might be just what we need - I wouldn’t be so sure that you are a coincidence in this.”

Lailah turned her attention back to the shelves then, and after a moment Mirei did the same. It was some time before her smile faded, and even then it left warmth behind.

 

-

 

Time has a strange way of melting and running together in certain places and situations. For Mirei, reading in a library was one of them. She emerged a couple of times at night to sleep at the inn, but she also occasionally woke up slumped across the table or in one of the few comfortable chairs kept for cozy readers without any memory of having dropped off. The seraphim smuggled her food from outside and made sure she ate it, though without the regularity of breakfast, midday, and dinner it was hard to say how many of these counted as meals. The workers in the library learned to move around her table as though it wasn’t there after they discovered that any books they put back in her occasional absence tended to find their ways back off the shelves and into her work stacks in short order. Mikleo found her paper and pens to keep track of her thoughts; Sorey occasionally nudged some nondescript volume into her piles of potential leads without explaining why he thought she should see it. At first she wondered if his oath required him to include a few red herrings to disguise his help, but then, as she gathered more pieces, she began to understand.

Human musings on seraphic curses as well as blessings; seraphic assurance that they blessed and blessed alone, unless tainted and made hellions. Songs of heroes and simple folk alike who weathered misfortune despite devout prayer. Legends of seraphim who refused shrines and companionship alike for no clear reason.

Shepherd Truth, who accidentally caused the death of a ‘misfortunate soul’ while trying to purify it, who retired soon after, passing her Prime Lord and pact on to her squire in grief. Hints in the tale of the approximate time and location, overlaps between this and earlier stories of fruitless prayer and ill luck in the area, and later ones of peace and calm.

_Seraphim may be affected by malevolence through the corruption of a vessel, close or prolonged exposure, or direct infliction by a malevolent party. Seraphim of certain elements are known to be more susceptible than others: water, it is said, is particularly at risk, due to its changeable and accepting nature. Some legends speak of seraphim cursing humans or areas with increased malevolence, though given the knowledge that these beings can neither create nor exude malevolence on their own one quickly sees this for the fallacy it is._

_Seraphim may repel malevolence through the strength of their domain, and the powerful may destroy beings under the influence of malevolence and thus provide a temporary respite from danger, but only Shepherds, humans imbued with the special power of certain seraphim, may truly purify and save a victim from malevolence._

_It is said that the purification of a hellion is the removal of malevolence from the victim. By taking it into himself and understanding it from a place apart yet sympathetic, the Shepherd removes all power the darkness has to transform or drive those who once bore it, and without power it is allowed to dissipate. A widely-known but oft-challenged theory suggests that this may be why human Shepherds are necessary, and that as beings outside of humanity, seraphim may not be able to understand or withstand the strength of such emotions as give rise to malevolence._

A note Mirei scribbled to herself the previous night, just before she fell asleep, surrounded by a morass of barely-decipherable shorthand brainstorming the natures of change and humans, malevolence and purification, inertia and seraphim:

_Sorey does NOT purify._

Awake again, she stared at it, absorbed its meaning along with all the piecemeal thoughts and clues that had led to it, then scribbled it out before gathering her things and going to inform the nearest librarian that she was done there; no doubt they’d be glad to see the back of her at this point, especially since they would know that she’d be taking her colorful band of seraphim with her…once she found the ones she couldn’t currently feel dozing inside her mind, at least.

It was time to move on.

 

-

 

“I want to go wherever there’s been unusually bad luck,” she had told them. “Places where people seem to get the opposite of a seraph’s blessing, like the area around Harris’ farm. Tell me if you hear or have heard of anything like that.”

A few scattered accounts came up as mere scraps of gossip, unreliable but, at the very least, current: a woodcutting village known for minor epidemics of unseasonable colds; a settlement at the far edge of the wetlands which had, against all environmental expectations, seen its third bad fire in the past ten years; caravan reports of unusually dangerous wild animals on Zaphgott Moor, though further rumors already had Shepherd Johann and his Squire on their way to investigate this.

It was a start.

First, though, Mirei decided that a quick visit was in order.

 

-

 

“Shepherd Mirei, I can’t thank you enough!” Gael beamed, grasping her hand with both of his own. “You have no idea what this means to me!”

“I’m glad we could help,” she said. “You seem much happier now.”

“I am. It’s amazing how far this area has come - not just Harris, but those around him as well. He took your advice and looked at the drainage of his fields while we were away and started working on it, and not long after I came back Bruta came and lent a hand along with a few others, and ever since there’s been such a…a spirit of fellowship among all these people!”

“Fellowship? Is that your blessing?”

“It must be,” Gael said. “I never suspected it before; the mess I always made of my blessings just kept getting in the way.”

“ _I was way off,”_ Mikleo complained inside her head. “ _I would’ve said it was something like fairness, based on the way his ‘blessings’ tried to bring people to even levels.”_

_“Poor Meebo just found out he can’t be right all the time.”_

_“Seriously Edna, that nickname got old_ centuries _ago…”_

“It seems to be working out for you - for everyone.” Mirei smiled again. “I really am glad.”

“It’s a little odd to say, but I feel like a brand new seraph.” Gael’s grin softened to something a little sheepish. “A very human phrase, I know. I guess they’re rubbing off on me.”

“Well, sometimes change isn’t a bad thing.”

“Also very human, but I can’t disagree. I still wish there was some way I could repay you. If you need anything from me, then as long as it’s within my power, you will have it.”

An idea occurred to her.

“Actually, there might be something…”

She left Gael to his newfound happiness and blessed domain with a quick step and a short list of names to ask after and places to look tucked away in her head. Gael hadn’t known of many seraphim with problems similar to his, but the few he did know gave her another angle to pursue, another start.

Mirei headed north.

 

-

 

“Your concern is noted, but unnecessary,” said the seraph of Clydeswood village. “My blessings may be unorthodox, but they do what I require and I have complete control over them.”

“It’s summer and the whole village has come down with colds,” Mikleo said, folding his arms. “How is that helping anybody?”

“The people of my village work too hard. They need to rest sometimes, but will not do so of their own volition. A cold may be reputedly unpleasant, but at least humans gripped by one slow down and wait until it has passed enough to work again.”

“And you never thought there might be a better way to do this?”

“My blessing is my blessing, and I will thank you to understand that.” The seraph’s tone could have frozen a lake solid. “Good day to you.”

With that the water seraph sailed off in the direction of the village and his shrine. Zaveid tilted his hat and looked after him with a calculating gleam in his eyes.

“So, game plan: I stop him--” a pendulum flicked out from between his fingers and back again in an instant -- “and Mirei armatizes and works that light magic before he gets free. It’ll take seconds if we get the drop on him. Easy.”

“It’ll get the job done at least,” Mikleo said.

Sorey said nothing, but Mirei saw the change in his expression from the corner of her eye before he turned his face away. She thought about what she had learned.

“I don’t think we should,” she said.

“Isn’t the whole point of this to fix broken blessings, or am I confused?” Zaveid asked.

“It is, but he doesn’t want to be fixed.”

“I don’t imagine most hellions really want to be purified at the moment either, but they thank you afterwards if they figure out what happened.”

“He’s not a hellion. He’s proud, and maybe that pride is getting in the way of him, but that’s not the same thing as malevolence. When I...when I helped Gael, it was easy because he wanted it to happen. This one would fight back, and I don’t think I could do this right if he did.”

“So we just leave him to screw with people’s health? Doesn’t seem fair.”

“I agree - what happens if a mistake is made, like an already-frail human getting sick and dying, or some woodcutter getting stubborn and pushing himself too hard?” Mikleo asked. “What happens if the people become dissatisfied and stop praying? This could lead to malevolence, and this seraph could be corrupted by it.”

“Then we’ll come back and deal with it. Come on, let’s go.”

“ _By walking away, you’re accepting any terrible thing that happens because of it,”_ Edna warned. “ _Are you really prepared for that?”_

“I think,” Mirei said, turning to walk away from the village, “that if I tried to use force, he’d definitely die…or maybe worse. You can’t just _make_ people change.

“In the end, it has to be his choice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all I currently have for fully completed, pre-written sections. I'm close to finishing another and may be able to upload it tomorrow or the next day if all goes well; otherwise updates are going to slow down a great deal. Thanks for coming along so far! It's been fun.


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